


Processing

by shadowolfhunter



Category: Caprica (TV)
Genre: Flirting, Love and Marriage, M/M, Risk-taking, courting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-05-29 16:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6384160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowolfhunter/pseuds/shadowolfhunter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Larry has a good, if unexciting, job. So what if he craves a little adventure? Only adventure comes in the shape of a Ha'la'tha enforcer with a name and reputation. So what's a guy gonna do? Take a little walk on the wild side and see where this is heading.</p><p>Or how Larry and Sam, met, fell in love, persuaded Larry's parents, and got married.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Processing

**Author's Note:**

> Re-visiting some of my favourite scifi, Caprica was gone far too soon. Like Star Trek, it offered a vision of the world where certain things were just normal. Accepted. I like that.
> 
> I really, really loved Sam Adama... one of the best characters that Sasha's ever played. I loved Larry too. And I have had endless fun imagining how they might have met, how they might have courted and the hoops they would have had to jump through to get Larry's parents to see how perfect they were together.

Larry was Caprica born, but Tauron bred. His immigrant parents having fled Tauron before it all went to hell, their anxieties being magnified by the experience they did everything in their power to fit in to their new home.

Larry loved his parents, and did everything that a dutiful only son should do. He had a perfectly average school career, never flying too high (his parents could not afford that and he was smart enough to realise it), maintained good grades and did not get into any trouble. He landed his first job only three weeks out of college, it was a reasonable job, a civilian processing clerk at the main police precinct.

It was a good job. The right sort of job for a young man in Larry’s position. But that didn’t mean that he didn’t crave a little adventure.

So if occasionally he took a small detour and a walk on the wild side through the cramped and crowded streets, and the bars, of Little Tauron, well that was for him to know, and hopefully his parents never to find out.

It was an ordinary average sort of Tauron bar. Larry had been in there a few times, he liked to sit over by the window, unobserved, mostly so that he could observe without being too obvious about it.

Watch life go by and feel a little tiny bit a part of it. Besides, this was where the Ha’la’tha hung out, and Gods forgive him, Larry was fascinated by them.

Especially him.

Larry did not know his name. The guy was tall, powerfully built, and the visible tattoos proclaimed his experience and status, but he was Larry’s age, or maybe even younger. The powerful commanding presence which swept all before him.

He wasn’t married, (that had been the first thing that Larry checked… without being obvious and that really took some doing), and Larry couldn’t see him with a girl hanging on his arm, the main floor was often full of beautiful women, he never looked at them, although many looked at him with longing glances.

Ergo… he was probably like Larry.

Or nothing like Larry, sitting imagining taking this guy home to his folks and introducing him, and his mother fainting from shock.

And it was Larry’s lucky night, because his guy walks in about five minutes after Larry.

Tall, surprisingly graceful and assured, he walks to the bar, sits, facing the door, leans sideways into the bar and turns his head to say something to the barkeeper.

Larry just stares at that beautiful profile, the gorgeous jawline, the long, muscular gloriousness of him and swallows. He blinks, he has absolutely no idea why he’s sitting in a bar in a decidedly dodgy district of town, staring at a Ha’la’tha enforcer with lust in his heart and love on his mind.

He’s so busy trying to figure out what the hell he thinks he’s playing at, he almost misses the guy staring back at him.

_Sweet Gods…_

Even from this distance he can see that the eyes are green, slightly widened, a soft and roguish smile curves the lips upward, and Larry is melting, because his guy is everything that Larry ever dreamed of, and he’s about to go over and answer the question that those eyes are asking him, when the door opens, and someone walks in, and his guy’s features are instantly schooled into something impassive and Larry swallows the last of his drink, gets to his feet and heads out of the door.

He glances back, and sees something that could easily be rueful regret on the face of his guy, and wonders all the way home if he has lost his mind, because Larry has fallen in love and he doesn’t even know his guy’s name.

 

“Adama, Samuel L.” Officer Mendes looks a little irritable, “the usual,” he slaps the ticket down on the counter and Larry reaches for it, glancing at the still figure next to Mendes.

Green eyes are staring back, this close there is definitely a roguish twinkle, and for a second Larry wonders exactly what that portends.

“You have me at a disadvantage,” Adama, Samuel L. leans forward a little, he’s still cuffed, and Larry melts a little more inside because even cuffed, inside the precinct, Adama oozes confidence. He’s totally relaxed, and Larry is a stammering idiot.

“You know my name,” _Gods, those lips,_ “I don’t know yours.”

“Larry.” Larry’s voice definitely doesn’t sound right, and Mendes gives him a look.

“Enough with the flirting, Sam.” Mendes reaches for his cuff keys, “you know the drill, the fine or the time.”

“The fine.” Sam doesn’t even rub his wrists, though Larry can see that the cuffs have chafed a bit, the skin rubbed red from where the metal closed about the elegant wrist bones. Perhaps Mendes overtightened them, he seems particularly annoyed with Sam.

Sam reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wallet, flaps it open, pulls out a wad of notes, which he hands to Larry folded.

Larry pulls himself together, takes the money and the form that Mendes put on the counter, and checks it.

Gods… there’s a scribbled note between the bills. By anybody’s reckoning that’s a bold move. Larry whisks the note out and tucks it under his blotter. No one saw, Mendes was looking the other way. His brain is whirling, because if there’s a note there, that means that Sam wrote it before he was arrested, that he got himself arrested so that Mendes or one of the other patrol officers would haul him down to the precinct where Larry works.

To see Larry.

Not just to take it to chance that they would meet in that bar on another night. But to actually set it up.

His guy. Sam.

His future husband.

_Holy frak!_


	2. Parental Units

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Larry and Sam date, and before long Larry knows that he is going to have to introduce Sam to his parents. It does not go according to plan.

The place scribbled down in the note is a restaurant, a nice one, and the time gives Larry enough time to leave work, get a shower, get changed and arrive at the restaurant in good time. The timing makes Larry wonder if Sam knows where he lives, (if he should be bothered by this being a possibility) and if Sam has calculated to the last minute how long it is going to take Larry to do things when he gets home.

Which is thrilling and a little strange and just so perfect that Larry is in a state of suppressed excitement for the rest of the day.

He arrives home, he’s decided on his blue suit, which he’s been told brings out the colour of his eyes, and on his gold knit shirt, which he knows does good things for his colouring. Sam is so gorgeous that Larry really wants to pull out all the stops, because he wants to feel on an equal footing.

Five minutes before the stated time, Larry walks through the front door of the restaurant and is guided to the table by a respectful maitre d’. Sam rises to his feet as Larry approaches.

No desk between them, no third wheel, no cuffs, just Larry and Sam.

Larry looks up into the face of the man he knows he is probably already more than half in love with even though they’ve barely met. He tries to get a grip on the surge in his libido and puts out a hand, “Larry Carleon,” he says. For a few seconds those beautiful green eyes hold his. “Sam Adama”, the Ha’la’tha enforcer smiles, and bends gracefully, raising Larry’s hand to his lips. 

The merest touch of lips to skin makes Larry shudder with pleasure. The graceful and surprisingly old fashioned greeting sends shivers down his spine. Sam pulls out Larry’s chair and guides his date into it, the old world courtly charm is unexpected and amazing and Larry’s head is in a whirl.

They talk, and it’s as though they have known each other for years. It’s comfortable, and relaxing, and Larry can’t remember when he last spent such an entertaining evening. Sam is absolutely everything his last three boyfriends have not been. He’s intelligent, forthright, and well-informed. He’s respectful, and he’s courting Larry.

They linger over coffee, and Sam asks if he can walk Larry home.

Of course Larry says yes.

 

So weeks pass, and before long it’s clear to Larry that he’s going to have to bite the bullet and tell his parents, because he knows that this is his forever love; and Sam is nothing like he expected from the Ha’la’tha. He’s playful and fun, and they established fairly early on no blood-soaked clothes in the house. Not that they’re actually living together because both Sam and Larry are traditional, but start as you mean to go on, so far Sam’s ‘job’ hasn’t intruded in their time together at all.

 

So Larry’s sitting on the couch in his parents’ house, carefully rehearsing everything he’s going to say in his head, and there’s so many ways this can go seriously wrong. He’s terrified his parents are going to have a fit, and that they won’t accept Sam.

 

Larry walks into the restaurant ahead of his parents, because there’s one tiny little thing he didn’t mention. Sam stands, he’s made a special effort for the occasion, his clothing is immaculate, expensive and he looks so gorgeous and so unsure, Larry’s heart melts all over again.

He turns to his parents, in time to catch the shock on their faces, which they try to smooth over, and Larry knows this is going to be a disaster.

They’re nervous, keep looking at Sam like he’s going to bite. Larry desperately tries to keep the conversation going, but it’s uphill. Sam’s manners are faultless, but once Larry catching him looking at Larry’s mum and dad, and there’s a pain in Sam’s eyes that just breaks Larry’s heart.

Dinner is, perversely, wonderful. Each course is delicious, but it all turns to ashes in Larry’s mouth. He hurt Sam, and that is so painful, because Sam has been through so much, Larry knows the things that Sam has done, knows about his childhood, about being forced to grow up too soon about the risks that Sam has taken for his brother, about just surviving.

Larry doesn’t have a clue how to fix this, so he eats course after course of this beautiful meal that Sam has ordered, and when it comes to the end and Sam puts his card on the waiter’s tray, and Larry’s father tries to protest, and it’s all so awkward, because Larry couldn’t have taken one little step and told his parents the truth. That he loves Sam Adama, Ha’la’tha enforcer, and he’s nothing like Larry’s parents think he is.

 

They walk outside, and Larry’s parents say their stiff goodbyes, and Larry’s heart breaks a little more as he sees the pain on Sam’s face. He moves in to kiss Sam, but the Ha’la’tha enforcer steps back. “I think you need to decide where you want to go, Larry.” Sam shakes his head, and if Larry didn’t know better, that might even be a sheen of tears in his eyes.

“I….” Larry tries to step closer, but Sam backs up again, and Larry knows not to push it, he’s given Sam quite enough pain, and enough to think about for tonight.

“I’ll say goodnight, then.” says Larry gently.

“Goodnight,” Sam ducks his head, and Larry’s sure he hears _my love_. It sounds like goodbye, but Sam turns and walks away and leaves Larry standing there, wondering how he’s going to fix this.

He turns and walks up the street, heading towards his parents’ car, and wonders just what the gods he is going to say to them.

His mother is looking frosty, and his father almost looks like he’s trying to be supportive. “Ha’la’tha. How could you, Larry.” His mother dabs at her eyes with a tissue, and Larry nearly snaps then because he doesn’t care what Sam is, only that he loves the man, not the Ha’la’tha, and Sam has never even brought that to Larry’s door.

“Sam is different.”

“Get in the car,” his father says, and suddenly Larry is angry. Even if he didn’t tell them exactly who Sam was, surely they trust his judgement. Or don’t they?

“No.” Larry wants to have this out now, because if he doesn’t nothing is going to be the same again. He needs this. Needs to go back to Sam with a clear heart. It’s make or break time.

“Son.” 

“Give me your wallets.” The voice that comes from behind Larry’s father is like a bucket of ice-water. It freezes them all in place.

“He’s got a knife.” Larry’s mother’s vocal chords sound paralysed with fear. Larry’s on the wrong side of the car, his parents are more exposed.

“Get away from him.” Larry’s knees are locked, his eyes on the man who is threatening his father, as Sam steps forward out of the shadows on the other side of the road.

“What’s it to you, Ha’la’tha?” This man is either an idiot or he fancies himself… scratch that, he’s an idiot, Sam is taller, heavier with a greater reach, and Larry knows enough about the Ha’la’tha to know that Sam’s visible tattoos mark him as a strong fighter. The would-be thief would be a fool.

He’s a fool, as Sam steps forward, the thief sees his chances diminishing and makes a desperate forward lunge, there’s blur of movement and a wet sounding crunch, and then Sam’s fist is burying itself in the thief’s stomach and he’s on his back on the floor, and Sam’s standing over him, and all Larry can think about is that Sam saved his father.

He steps forward as Sam winces, and his hand goes to his side, “call the police.” Sam says. He’s swaying a little, but he’s still on his feet, and Larry crowds in close, as Sam’s hand goes to his side again. “I think…” he says hesitantly, and then Larry’s father is there, and they barely have time to catch as Sam’s knees buckle.

Larry’s father pulls off his overcoat and puts it over Sam. As Larry strips off his jacket to fold it under Sam’s head. “Call an ambulance.” Larry’s father looks across at his son, as Larry looks doubtful, “son, I’ve got this, call an ambulance.” As Larry reaches into his pocket, and shakily dials the number, Larry’s mother hands his father something, which the elder Carleon presses against Sam’s wound.

Sam moans in pain, but doesn’t apparently waken.

Larry dials and prays to the gods that this all comes right.


End file.
